MOGADISHU (Reuters) — The Somali government said on Thursday that Al Qaeda had made a young Islamist commander its leader in Mogadishu as fighting raged for a second day in the coastal capital.

DUBAI — Stung by a mounting number of deaths on increasingly clogged and unsafe roads, the bustling Gulf emirate of Dubai has declared war on reckless drivers.

LONDON — Gordon Brown may lead efforts to revive the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a way of tackling Iran’s atomic ambitions, his most pressing foreign policy challenge once he becomes British prime minister.

JUBA (Reuters) — South Sudan’s president has called for rebels from the western Darfur region to meet in his capital to build consensus ahead of possible peace talks to end a four-year-old insurgency and humanitarian crisis.

RAMADI — Crouched around the camera’s high-tech screen, the US Marines watch flames burn the camouflage netting around one of their lookout posts on a nearby roof, just hit by a burst of machinegun fire.

ERBIL (AFP) — The prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan raised fresh calls on Thursday for a referendum to decide the future of the country’s crucial oil hub of Kirkuk, warning that Kurdish patience had limits.

BEIT LID, West Bank — Urban warfare exercises by Israeli troops in full battle gear have been giving Palestinians in this West Bank village some sleepless nights.

ROME // Italy’s strategy of negotiating the release of Taliban militants in exchange for an Italian hostage in Afghanistan has put Premier Romano Prodi under fire days before a crucial parliamentary vote on keeping the country’s troops in Afghanistan.The move has drawn the ire of conservative opponents – whose backing …

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says if the Congress does not approve additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by mid-April, without special conditions, the department will have to make cuts that could affect troop training and deployments.  VOA’s Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon. Secretary Gates began …

UNITED NATIONS, March 22: The United Nations drug Czar said on Wednesday that corruption must be stamped out and borders strengthened to run emerging Afghan drug cartels out of business, particularly in the new ‘Golden Triangle’ of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.